As well, Christine Macdonaldoffers six tips to help you combat procrastination.

You know that whole multitasking thing you’re doing? Here, Writing for Digital discusses how he’s thought multitasking has helped him—but he also mentions some studies that suggest it can work against creativity and productivity. V. interesting!

As my writing group and crit partners know, I’m quick to point out unnecessary dialogue tags. *Ahem—most of them are unnecessary. When you *must* tag, however, it’s better to do so through an action sentence.

To cliff hang (at the ends of chapters) or not to cliff hang? Ray Rhameyshares his thoughts over at Writer Unboxed.

Agent of awesome Mary Kole of Andrea Brown Literary Agencyanswers a reader’s question about scene and chapter length as well as where to break.

CHILD’S PLAY

Middle-grade novels are hot right now, and “boy books” are even more sought after by agents and editors. Here, Kole discusses character and voice in MG boy books as well as touches on what author Hannah Moskowitz calls “The Boy Problem.”

This week, it was announced that a “politically correct” version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to be released. A former student of mine, Dan Wilbur, runs the blog Better Book Titles, and here is his answer to that.

“In the Blogosphere” is a series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week (usually).

It’s been a few weeks since I did one of these posts. As I’ve mentioned, it’s been busy, busy, busy. I’ve been saving posts, but I haven’t been sharing them—how inconsiderate of me!

RESOURCES

This oldie but goodie post is from John Robert Marlow’sSelf Editing Blog, and it deals with something I’ve seen a lot of lately: bouncing eyeballs. Many writers—especially those writing young adult lit—have eyes and jaws and stomachs (and such) doing all sorts of things they couldn’t possibly be doing. And while expressions like “she rolled her eyes,” “his jaw fell to the floor,” “his stomach dropped to his knees” are simply that—expressions—idioms—they can sometimes be jarring to the reader, and it is recommended by many that writers avoid using such phrases. Marlow’s post does a great job of explaining why.

I mean, this is an eye-roll according to Morfland of OpticalFantasies.com!

And, my absolute favorite example of this comes from when I attended book doctor Bobbie Christmas’s class at the 2008 Southeastern Writers Association conference. Christmas said she was editing a romance novel, and one of the lines read, “Her eyes were glued to his crotch.” If you think about that image—the literal image—that can definitely take you out of what I’m sure was supposed to be a hot-and-heavy moment!

But I digress. 🙂

In this post, Paulo Campos of yingle yangle suggests using film to expand your use of body language.

WRITING FOR YOUNGSTERS

Since I write YA and am a recovering high school (and middle school for one year) English teacher, I have a soft spot for all things kids’-lit related.

In her guest post on the Guide to Literary Agents blog, Jewel Allen offers some tips on writing middle-grade lit kids will dig.

To swear or not to swear? Andrea Brown Literary Agency’sMary Kole discusses this very question in a few posts over at her blog, Kidlit.com. Here is the first of those posts.

LOGLINES & YOU

In the quest for representation, I have discussed queries and pitches and loglines a lot with other writers as well as here on the blog.

What’s this whole platform thing everyone’s talking about all the time? Well, YA author Jamie Harrington will tell you. She did a great little series over at her blog. A must-read/view for all writers.

“In the Blogosphere” is a weekly series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week. Most posts will be from that week, but if I find some “oldies but goodies,” I’ll throw those up here as well.

I never find as much time to read blogs as I want, but here are a few posts that struck me this week.

LIVING VICARIOUSLY THROUGH OTHERS

This week has been a positive one, in terms of getting some nibbles and bites on my manuscript. I’m trying very hard to curb my excitement, however, as I know the road to publication is actually more like a jacked-up staircase.

In the interest of keeping positive, let’s live vicariously through three up-and-coming young adult authors:

Jodi Meadows. Although this happened a few weeks ago, I only found out this week: my new pal, who has been up and down her jacked-up staircase for the past 7 years, signed with Lauren MacLeod of The Strothman Agency (whom Jodi refers to as “agent of awesome”).

Sarah Wylie. If this post doesn’t warm your heart, you’re dead inside. Wylie, repped by FinePrint Literary‘s Suzie Townsend, announced her debut novel, All These Lives, was just sold at auction and will be out in 2012.

Steph Bowe. This 16-year-old Aussie is repped by Curtis Brown Ltd.’s Ginger Clark, and her debut novel (working title: These Bones) will be published this September in Australia and New Zealand (Text Publishing) and the summer of 2011 in the U.S. (Egmont USA). She’s also a part of The YA 5, a blog dedicated to changing the way young adult literature is discussed.

**Just a reminder: My guest blog on “leetspeak/text message lingo” in YA will appear on Bowe’s blog Monday, so don’t forget to check it out!

At coffee with Jodi the other day, I brought up the subject of author advances. Being that I didn’t know much about what to expect—I thought the average book deal was wayyyyy less than it actually is—Jodi put me in touch with this post by fantasy author Jim C. Hines. I learned a lot!

Are you one of those Facebookers who changes your status every time something upsets you? You might want to think twice about that after reading this post by Andrea Brown Literary Agency‘s Mary Kole over at Kidlit.com.

“In the Blogosphere” is a weekly series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week. Most posts will be from that week, but if I find some “oldies but goodies,” I’ll throw those up here as well.

I never find as much time to read blogs as I want, but here are a few posts that struck me this week—and last week, as I slacked and didn’t do a Blogosphere post last week.

SOME SPLAININ’ TO DO

I don’t know if it was just the places I was checking, but it seemed like a lot of industry peeps wanted to explain a lot of things to writers this week. Maybe the winter freeze is making people write bad queries? Or maybe it’s making writers whinier?

Being that much of my job now relies on waiting for responses from others, this post, by Peter Bregman over at Harvard Business Review, helps put a lot in perspective in terms of what to do when your voicemails and e-mails go unanswered.

Andrea Brown Literary Agency‘s Mary Kolereminds us that getting an agent is not a magic bullet to publication; and, in this post, The Intern talks about why agents and editors would *like* to set you straight when you send bad queries—or non queries, as it were—(but why they just can’t).

As seen on TV.

CONTESTS

Some awesome peeps are giving away some awesome prizes!

Break out your tap shoes: Kids’ lit author, the award-winning Beth Kephart wants to know your definition of dance. She’s giving away signed copies of her second YA novel, House of Dance, to two lucky commenters with the best entries (contest ends March 5).

Want to have your fiction published in Writer’s Digest? Here, WD’s Zachary Petit lays out how to enter their monthly Your Story contest.

The paperback, out this March.

ALSO

Check out my recent interview with Books & Such Literary Agency‘s Etta Wilson on the Guide to Literary Agents blog.

You guys made it tough, but I chose Jessica Guerrasio‘s Web site/blog entry—YA writer Natalie Whipple‘s blog—as the contest winner for a few reasons:

I’m not sure if Jessica intended this or not, but Whipple writes YA—and being that I too write YA, this blog seems a good fit for me. It felt to me like Jessica tailored her pick to something appropriate for me specifically, and even if it just happened to be a coincidence, I appreciate its relevance to my own writing.

Whipple is repped by Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Ltd., which pretty much makes me completely jealous of her. While she is unpubbed, she represents what I hope to be the next step in my writing career, and I think I can learn a lot from her. I believe the story is that she entered one of his blog contests and snagged him that way, so I need to learn all I can from her!

Up-and-coming YA author Natalie Whipple

The post Jessica chose is interesting and informative, which were really the only requirements. In it, Whipple discusses her revision process and lists questions she asks herself at every stage. If the rest of her posts are like that (and, in the poking around I’ve done on her Between Fact and Fiction blog, I’ve found that many are), then I’m a happy girl.

It wasn’t a site or blog I’ve ever seen or visited. Some of the entries I got were Web sites I already use, and while you wouldn’t have known that for most of them, a few entries I got were for sites I have linked right on my blogroll.

So, congrats, Jessica! If you can e-mail me an addy where I can send your 2010 copy of Guide to Literary Agents, I’ll get that in the mail for you.